Chicken Feet and Gluten Steaks: behind the scenes of Darcie Friesen Hossack’s Stillwater

Book cover

It took a long time before I realized that I grew up weird.

Who, after all, doesn’t munch on fried chicken feet, toenails intact, while sitting in her Mennonite grandmother’s kitchen? Or doesn’t take severed pig’s snouts to school for kindergarten show-and-tell?

Who has not slept in a barn hayloft, slurped warm milk, fresh from a milking bucket, and been gifted a paper lunch bag full of mixed nuts, hard candies, mandarin oranges and a King James Bible for Christmas?

It wasn’t until I discovered Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness on a bookstore display (drawn to it’s cover by the illustration of a chicken and a hatchet), that I finally saw this side of my family in the mirror. And when I clearly saw that we might not be “normal.”

Miriam Toews will always be, well, Miriam Toews: the brilliant-yet-very human author who unexpectedly brought my lived, and my family experience, to life with grace and hilarity on the page. The woman who gave us, among other titles, Swing Low: A Life, All My Puny Sorrows, Irma Voth and, of course, Women Talking, the ensuing screenplay for which went on to win an Academy Award. (Entrusted with Miriam’s phone number, I once butt-dialed her. Thankfully, she found this funny.)

Reading Miriam Toews is also how I discovered other Mennonite voices (including my first writing mentor, Sandra Birdsell, Andreas Schroeder, Rudy Wiebe, Patrick Friesen, Elsie Neufeld, Dora Duek…and more recently Andrew Unger, Casey Plett, Keanan Byggdin, Jessica Penner, Mitch Toews, Daniel Shank Cruz…etcetera to the point that we have a Facebook group numbering more than 200 members).

As you can see, along with my own collection of short stories, Mennonites are well represented in both literature and on screen.

Besides which, how many times have you heard cracks about horses and buggies and plain-dress modesty culture in comedy sketches, or at your neighbour’s backyard BBQs?

How often have you been been presented with Mennonites (or Amish, our spiritual and literal cousins) featured on episodes of television hospital dramas and even two whole seasons featuring a Mennonite Drug Cartel? And let’s not forget this little nugget from one of the best episodes ever of Schitt’s Creek!

No photo description available.

Mennonites, it seems, because we’re weird, have become ubiquitous in the popular culture.

But I was also raised Seventh-day Adventist.

And doesn’t every child also have a vegetarian, Sabbath-keeping, apocalypse-expecting, latter-day prophet-following side of the family?

Didn’t everyone, visiting that other side on long weekends and holidays, wash the starch out of a bowlful of flour, in order to keep only the elastic mass of gluten, with which they then made gluten steaks?

And I’m certain we all made sure, absolutely sure, that the bacon bits on our salads were made of soy instead of anything that might have parted the hoof and therefore risked our eternal souls?

Surely no one reading this missed out on quarterly visits by the ABC (Adventist Book Centre), where we lined up outside a semi-trailer to purchase books about demons, along with canned and frozen vege-meats that were invented in the 1950s, and which are mostly made of industrial chemicals and salt?

Wait?

No?

This is next level weird, you say?

Well, it is.

So, you’d think Seventh-day Adventists would be well represented in the cultural universe of storytelling.

After all, the religion got its start with a group of believers in Michigan who, being certain they had cracked a secret code embedded in the Bible, sold all their possessions, went out into a field, and spent an entire night awaiting the second coming of Jesus.

This, for obvious reasons, came to be known as The Great Disappointment.

Hence disappointed, what remained of these believers took another look at the numbers, chose another date, and went out into the field again.

(Incidentally, I learned all of this by attending two different SDA academies for high school, and by going to Sabbath School and Church every Saturday morning for fifteen or so years. The 28 fundamental beliefs are also required learning before affirming them in baptism, which I did.)

Anyway, with a second disappointment behind them, it was determined that Jesus had never meant to return to earth on either of those nights, after all.

Instead, they realized, on October 22, 1844, Christ had entered the Heavenly Sanctuary (analogous to the architecture of the Old Testament Sanctuary), where He began to judge the living and the dead. There, as Lizzy, my 16-year-old character from Stillwater notes, He’s been going over the naughty and nice list ever since.

And yet, the only times SDAs have been portrayed in literature or entertainment, to my notice, have been with “A dingo ate my baby!” (yes, that was us), a mention in a single episode of House. Then there was (however inaccurately) Seventh-day Adventists Lane Kim and her mother in Gilmore Girls. SDAs are also glancingly referenced whenever someone remembers to point out that David Koresh (of Waco infamy) started off as an Adventist (there’s a new mini-series on Netflix).

Oh, and of course there are books about us, written by us, for us, where we come off very well, and which are sold to us by… the ABC. I remember one such novel where I family was miraculously saved from starvation (think manna from heaven) because they were faithful to the point of near death by not eating the neighbour’s pork chops.

And I say “us,” but I left the church a long time ago. Almost twenty years, to be approximate.

I can also say that, while I started writing Stillwater more than a decade ago, it nevertheless has taken me every one of those years to process my experience with Adventism and Adventists into ink for this novel.

And weird ink is good ink. It really is. Which is exactly why I’m a bit worried about the possible backlash. Mennonites, after all, did not take entirely kindly to Rudy Wiebe’s And Peace Shall Destroy Many. Or to Miriam Toews in the beginning and sometimes, even, now. Some did not take kindly to my own Mennonites Don’t Dance, which was banned by the public library system in far north Alberta.

I think I’m ready this time, though.

Because now that Stillwater is out, people (reporters, mostly) have started asking what I hope will come of holding up a mirror to my second, weird family religion?

Honestly?

I hope other writers will follow.

I hope Adventist literature becomes as ubiquitous a sub-genre as it has with books by and about Mennonites.

I hope a hundred mirrors get held up to reflect what goes on behind church (and school) doors.

Because as much as I’ve made light and sport my experiences of Adventism (and Menno-ism and, really, Conservative Evangelicalism in general) for the sake of this blog post, it’s behind these closed doors, where many of the (metaphorical) lights are turned off, that darkness is encouraged to flourish. Where purity culture, rape culture, misogyny, homophobia and spiritual abuses are swept under the pews. Where tenets of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles* is allowed to creep in, often unnamed. And in the case of Adventism, it’s where the words of a 19th-century prophet, who was hit in the head by a rock before she started to see angels and aliens, still guide the lives and decisions of the adherents inside.

There’s a lot of these kinds of thing, too, in the pages of Stillwater.

But I don’t hold the monopoly on having either experienced life as an Adventist, or on telling those stories.

What I hope is, when it comes to both readers for Stillwater and the writers that may come forward next, is to discover that I am, as with the Mennonites who are writing their way out of their individual and collective darkness, with humour and with grace, very far from being alone.

And now, in case you didn’t believe me about the Gluten, here’s the recipe (this and 20+ others can be found in Stillwater)!

GLUTEN STEAKS
8 cups organic, unbleached flour
3 cups water
8 cups homemade vegetable stock

Add water to flour and combine. Knead until dough becomes elastic, and
then form into a ball. Place ball in a large bowl and cover with water.
Allow it to soften overnight.

To “wash” the flour, work the starch out of the dough by kneading it in the
bowl of water while making sure to keep the dough together. It will become
more elastic as you work. Discard the washing liquid.

Covering dough with water, let dough rest for about 30 minutes, and then
wash it again in fresh water. Repeat washing and kneading until the water
is almost entirely clear.

Bring vegetable stock to a rolling boil.

With clean kitchen scissors, snip steak-sized slices of the gluten meat into
the stock. Boil gently for 30–35 minutes, until the steaks float to the top.
Remove with tongs.

Coat the steaks in breading and fry in a little oil. Serve with mashed potatoes
and well-cooked vegetables.

Note: Can also be ground up for burgers or spaghetti sauce. (no, really)

*Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles is the cult revealed in Amazon Prime’s Shiny Happy People. For future reading, bookmark the upcoming memoir by Jill Duggar, Counting the Cost, coming in September 2023.

Stillwater. Coming Spring 2023 from Darcie Friesen Hossack and Tidewater Press!

Front cover: Stillwater by Darcie Friesen Hossack

When Lizzy is forced to move to the Adventist commune of Stillwater, she is sure the end times have begun. She’s not wrong.

Sixteen-year-old Lizzy is trapped, caught between her passion for science and the teachings of her Seventh-day Adventist father and Mennonite mother. But she isn’t the only one with problems: her mother, Marie, is increasingly reliant on prescription medication to recover from a car accident that might—or might not—have been deliberately caused by her husband, Daniel.

In a bid to regain his social standing and self-esteem, Daniel moves the family to an Adventist commune in BC’s Okanagan Valley, where Lizzy meets another recent arrival with secrets of his own. He helps her establish a clandestine connection to the outside world that she hopes will help her curb her tongue and retain her sanity long enough to finish high school, but her plans change when her younger brother, Zach, is threatened. Lizzy and Zach flee to Marie’s childhood home with their reluctant mother in tow. When her father arrives to take his family back to Stillwater, old resentments collide with new, forcing everyone to face a day of judgement.

  • Fiction, 290pp
  • ISBN 978-1-990160-20-2 (paperback)
  • ISBN 978-1-990160-21-9 (e-book)
  • 5.5″ x 8.5″
  • To be published May 2023
  • Paperback: CA $22.95 / US $18.95
  • Ebook: CA $15.95 / US $13.95

Review: Mennonites Don’t Dance

Thank you so much to Penny and Literary Hoarders for this amazing review!

literary hoarders

Ever since reading The Divinity Gene, I cannot get enough of short stories! And does it seem only to me that Canadians are at the forefront of producing excellent, high-quality short fiction? Admittedly, I’ve only been reading Canadian short fiction, but with each collection completed, I feel they keep getting better and better!

What originally drew me to Mennonites Don’t Dance is this haunting and beautiful cover. But the moment I began reading, I just could not put it down! The Globe and Mail review says it is “arresting, mesmerizing, authentic, stunning”. Yes, yes, yes and yes!

I do believe this is my favourite collection so far. Again, as the G&M says, the characters and stories are so authentic. I couldn’t agree more with that word – authentic. Because every character written in this collection is genuine and well, yes, authentic. Each person is perfectly portrayed in a perfectly described setting or…

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2012 Evergreen Award Shortlist announced

I’m head over heels in love with this award! Thank you so much OLA for shortlisting Mennonites Don’t Dance.

Huge congratulations to every one of the other authors and publishers!

news release by Quill & Quire

OLA announces 2012 Evergreen Award shortlist

The Ontario Library Association has announced its shortlist for the2012 Evergreen Award, which honours the best in Canadian fiction and non-fiction titles.

Selected by a committee of librarians, this year’s nominees are:

During the month of October, the general public is invited to vote for their favourite shortlisted book. The winner will be announced in November and the award presented at the OLA Conference in February 2013. Last year, Emma Donoghue took the Evergreen Award for Room (HarperCollins Canada).

Recipes from nicefatgurdie lately

Mini Choklat-y Cupcakes

February 11, 2012 by whatlooksin | Edit

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup Choklat (or the best quality available) cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp kosher salt
5 oz butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup whipping cream
For the chocolate ganache frosting:
3/4 cup whipping cream
6 oz dark variety of Choklat, or other chocolate, chopped
In a medium bowl, whisk together first 5 ingredients.
In the bowl of a power mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar for 5 minutes on medium speed, until light and pale. Incorporate egg. Alternately, in 2 batches each, add flour/cocoa mixture and milk/cream mixture. Mix until batter is uniform and smooth.
Line 36 mini-cupcake cups with paper liners. Fill each 3/4 full and bake at 350F for 12 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Cool completely.
Meanwhile, place chopped chocolate in a medium, stainless steel bowl. Heat cream in a pot over medium until just boiling. Immediately pour hot cream over chocolate and let stand for a few minutes. Whisk until chocolate is thoroughly incorporated and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Continue to stir frequently with a rubber spatula, scraping sides, as ganache cools. When completely cool and thickened, frost cupcakes using an offset spatula.
Note: Recipe will also make 12 regular-sized cupcakes. Bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes.
Where to find it: www.sochoklat.com

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1 quart Saskatoons
2 quarts water
2/3 cup sugar
4-5 tbs flour
1 cup sweet cream
Cook fruit and water until soft.
Add half of the sugar.
Add the other half of the sugar to the flour and mix with cream until smooth.
Add mixture to the pot and stir constantly until thickened.
You can serve this warm or cold.

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Warm Berry Compote

February 9, 2012 by whatlooksin | Edit

1 1/2 cups red wine (not cooking wine!)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups frozen blueberries or Saskatoon berries
1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries
3 tbs cornstarch
3 tbs cold water
In a medium pot over medium-high heat, bring red wine and sugar to a boil, whisking frequently. Add blueberries and return to a boil.
Meanwhile, combine cornstarch and water together to make a slurry. When berry mixture is boiling, add about half of the cornstarch mixture and bring back to a simmer, which will reveal how much thickening has been accomplished. If needed, add a little more cornstarch mixture.
Add raspberries to pot and heat until they’re warmed through and have released some of their juices into the sauce, being careful not to break them up while stirring. Let cool somewhat before serving over angel food cake, topped with whipped cream.
Note: While this may seem like a lot of wine, it becomes a background flavour, mild and mellow.

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2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 tbs olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chilli powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 1/2 cups organic chicken stock
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup blanched sliced almonds, toasted
1 tbs chopped fresh coriander
Cut chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces. In a Dutch oven set over medium-high heat, heat 1 tbs of the olive oil. Cook chicken until browned. Remove to a bowl and set aside.
Heat remaining 1 tbs olive oil in the same pot and cook onion, garlic and spices, stirring until onion is soft.
Return chicken to pot, along with stock. Bring to a simmer, then cover and set in a 350F oven for an hour, until chicken is tender (the tagine should be fairly dry, not at all soupy). Add apricots, honey and almonds. Sprinkle with coriander. Serve with couscous.

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Hunter’s Pie

February 8, 2012 by whatlooksin | Edit

2 pound beef roast, trimmed
4-6 tbs canola oil
1 large onion
2 medium carrots
1 leek, white and light green parts only
1 celery stalk
3 cloves garlic
5 medium white mushrooms
5 cups beef stock
1 cup red wine
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
kosher salt/fresh ground pepper
Heat beef stock and keep hot on a back burner.
Chop vegetables and steak into approximately 1/4-inch dice. In a large pot over high heat, heat 1 tbs oil. Sweat onions, carrots, leek and celery. Add garlic and sweat, then add wine. Simmer to reduce liquid by 1/3.
Lightly season raw beef. In a large skillet, heat 1 tbs oil. Sear 1/4 of the beef at a time, transfer to a large bowl, and repeat, adding oil as needed. When beef is done, add mushrooms to pan and deglaze with a splash of wine. Transfer vegetables and mushrooms to bowl with beef.
In the pot used for the vegetables, melt butter over medium-high. Add flour and whisk vigorously to form a paste; about 1 minute. A few ladles at a time, add hot stock, whisking constantly. When a smooth gravy has formed, add meat and vegetables. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat and continue to simmer about 35-40 minutes. Season to taste.
For the mashed potatoes:
3 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sour cream
kosher salt/fresh ground pepper
Peel and halve potatoes. Cook in salted water over high heat until potatoes are tender. Drain. Press through a ricer (or mash). Stir in butter and sour cream. Season to taste.
The dish may be assemble traditionally, in a baking pan, with the meat/vegetable mixture on the bottom, topped with mashed potatoes and baked at 350F until hot and bubbly.
Or place a ring mould (we used an appetizer-sized 2-inch ring) onto a serving plate, fill 2/3 with stew, top with potatoes, and gently lift ring.

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Apple Strudel

February 7, 2012 by whatlooksin | Edit

1 cup warm milk
1 tbs active dry yeast
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup melted butter (cooled)
2 large eggs, well beaten
1/2 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 egg and 1 tbs milk for egg wash
Dissolve yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar in the warm milk. Set aside ten minutes to proof, until foamy.
In a large bowl, combine yeast mixture, sugar, butter, eggs and salt. Add flour and bring together with a fork until dough begins to form. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 5-7 minutes to form a soft, elastic dough.
Transfer to a buttered bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside in a warm place to rise until doubled; about 2 hours.
Meanwhile, prepare apple filling:
1/4 cup butter
5 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
5 medium apples, cored, peeled, chopped
Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add brown sugar and cinnamon and stir with a wooden spoon. Add apples and sautee, stirring, until tender-firm; about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide in half. Roll one half into a 12×12-inch square. Spread with half the apple mixture, leaving a border on all sides. Roll up and transfer to a Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Repeat with second half of dough and apples.
Cover rolls and let rise until about doubled.
Beat an egg together with 1 tbs milk. Using a pastry brush, brush egg over tops of rolls.
Bake at 325F for 35-40 minutes, until golden. Transfer to cooling racks.

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Lemon pudding cakes

February 6, 2012 by whatlooksin | Edit

128g granulated sugar
70 g all-purpose flour
pinch salt
4 large eggs, separated
325 ml buttermik
70 g fresh-squeezed lemon juice
zest from 3 lemons
Butter and sugar 8 ramekins (custard cups). Set aside.
Into a medium bowl, sift together sugar, flour and salt.
Whisk egg whites to soft peaks.
Whisk together egg yolks, buttermilk, lemon juice and zest until fluffy.
Gradually fold the dry ingredients to the egg yolk/lemon mixture until combined. Fold in the eggs whites, a little at first to lighten the mixture, then in thirds. Deflate as little as possible.
Divide mixture among prepared moulds. Place in deep-sided baking dishes. Add hot water to baking dishes, half way up the sides of the custard cups. Cover with foil, carefully place in a 300F oven. Bake 25 minutes, then uncover and bake until tops spring back when touched; about 15 minutes.
Remove custard cups from water. Let cool to room temperature. Invert over serving dishes and shake lightly until they come loose. Dust with icing sugar or serve with raspberry sauce.

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readings, Red Deer and Robert Kroetsch

Saturday, May 28th.

I’m at the Mayfield Inn & Suites in Edmonton, having just delivered a breakfast keynote for the Alberta Association of Library Technicians (AALT). An engagement arranged by Susan Toy, a friend from Humber who has never failed to live up to a long ago promise that, if my book was ever published, she’d do everything she could to help get air under its wings.

As the girl who used to sit on the floor among the fiction stacks of every library and bookstore I ever visited, gazing at the H-authored shelves, trying to believe enough work could earn me a place among them, giving a keynote to a roomful of library techs is more than a little surreal. Copies of Mennonites Don’t Dance are now on their way to new libraries, including a high school and middle school.

In a very little while, the winner and runners up of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award will be announced in Toronto. I’m in the running, along with Teri Vlassopolous, another friend from Humber.

Several hours later, Susan and I are headed out of Edmonton. She’s on her way home, and my sister lives along the way.

Although rewarding, it’s been a long weekend. I don’t travel well, and feel ready for the glue stick factory. My post-reading migraine is crackling on the horizon. But Susan has arranged a surprise that will make all that disappear for a little while.

For the moment, though, I still don’t know that anything but a bathroom break is on our itinerary.

The last time I stopped in Red Deer, it was 18 years ago and I had my wedding dress in the back seat of my mother’s Ark-sized Oldsmobile.

This time, I’m with Susan as she wends her Subaru into a residential neighbourhood. New developments surround us with show homes, and I begin to worry that:

1) We’re lost, and

2) I didn’t, ten minutes ago, make myself clear.

“If I pretend I’m interested in that townhouse there, the realtor might let me use the bathroom!”

“Yes, yes,” says Susan. “You’ll be fine for another minute. I’m taking you to meet someone.”

What?! Nooooo!

Glue sticks. Migraine. Bathroom! I want to say. But Susan knows I’m knackered. I know she knows I’m knackered. She wouldn’t take me on a detour unless it was going to shake my boughs.

Turning into the driveway of an elegant condominium building, Susan says, “There he is.”

On a bench, taking in a blue Alberta afternoon, is Robert Kroetsch.

I’m not well traveled enough, connected or schooled enough, to recognize him by sight alone. An ignorance that makes me instantly nervous when Susan tells me who we’ve come to visit. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time, because I would’ve spent it worrying. After all, I’m still clutching my very first book, and this man is a legend.

More, I know that fellow Thistledown author, Anne Sorbie, lately loaned him a copy of my stories.

“He’ll give you an honest opinion,” she said.

Honest opinions didn’t scare me until the book was printed and bound. Until then, anything or everything could still be fixed.

Now, even though the reviews have been generous enough to leave me slack-jawed, and Mennonites Don’t Dance has landed on two shortlists, I don’t know what to expect. Just that I keep expecting a reversal of fortunes.

What I do know is that this gentleman, who is gracious and kind as he takes my hand and shakes it warmly, is someone who has a right to his opinion.

“I wish I’d thought to take the two of you out to dinner,” he says. And just like that, he puts me at ease.

How do I tell him, or Susan, that this next half hour is already 30 minutes I will never, not ever, forget? Do I even know this yet?

We spend the time talking about books and writers. I tell him who taught me. His eyes light up as he says that he taught my teachers. Then he says, “I’ve read your stories and they’re extraordinary.”

After so many years of doubt, my heart is on my sleeve, along with these stories.

“How do you go into all those dark places?” he asks. And because I don’t think about being smart or clever, because Robert Kroetsch is so easy to talk to, I say, “With a lamp.”

He nods and agrees. There’s no finding one’s way without one.

As the minutes tick and it’s time to get back on the road, I already know that if my name isn’t called in Toronto tonight, I’ve been given something priceless.

Half an hour later, though the three of us hoped the announcement would come in while Susan and I were still in Red Deer, we’re driving again when I find out that I’m a runner up.

After I call my husband, I send an email to Robert Kroetsch.

It’s wonderful news, he says. He’s glad to have met me on this special day. There’s more to the email, but repeating his words would lighten their weight.

Runner up may be the bridesmaid’s prize. And to everyone who doesn’t write, the dollar difference between first place and not looks like a loss.

I would love to have won. I would love to have been in Toronto to hear my name called.

Who could pretend otherwise? Although I can’t even describe what a thing it is to be shortlisted for such an award!

As Susan and I drive towards Calgary, the crackle begins to return and I’m anxious to see my sister.

Today has been a gift, and I look forward to a few days from now, when I’m home and can peel back the tape and untie the ribbons.

Writers Reading Recipes!

If you’re within the delivery area of one of the newspapers that carries my food column, next week’s story (or the week after that, depending on the paper)  is all about Writers Reading Recipes.

It’s more than the very good idea of Book Madam Julie Wilson! It’s a literary feast, with celebrated authors lending their voices to tempting dishes. Better than bedtime stories. Almost as good as eating. Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer even reads in Flemish.

So find someplace quiet, have a seat. Take a pen with you. You might want to make a grocery list.

Writers reading recipes begins with a series of readings by five authors. Listen in here!

In order of appearance:
Julie Wilson, “Tender Eggs with Cream and Chives”
Sarah Leavitt, “Pumpernickel Bread Ring”
Iain Reid, “Coconut Ginger Lentil Soup”
Darcie Friesen Hossack, “Rollkuchen”
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Next,

Teri Vlassopolous reads Aunt Gwen’s Fried Egg Sandwiches in “H is for Happy” from An Alphabet for Gourmets, by M. F. K. Fisher, published in 1948.

Teri Vlassopoulos’s first book, Bats or Swallows, was published by Invisible Publishing in Fall 2010. She’s not only a good friend of mine from writing school, but we were co-short-listed for the 2011 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Her favourite meal is breakfast.

In the third instalment,

Writers Reading Recipes continues with Kim Moritsugu reading “Butterscotch Brownies” from The Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker.

Kim Moritsugu is a creative writing teacher, food blogger and the author of four novels and one novelette. Visit her at The Hungry Novelist and kimmoritsugu.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KimMoritsugu.

The results are in!

Driving from Edmonton to Calgary, fellow Humber grad and Danuta Gleed Award nominee Teri Vlassopolous texted me with news from The Writers’ Union of Canada’s AGM. More on the trip to come, but for now, congratulations to Billie Livingston!

WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD

The Writers’ Union of Canada and John Gleed are pleased to announce that Billie Livingston is the recipient of the $10,000 DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD for Greedy Little Eyes (Vintage Canada), judged the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2010.

Jury members Douglas Glover, J. Jill Robinson, and Claire Holden Rothman said of Greedy Little Eyes: ‘‘Billie Livingston’s writing has energy, spunk and daring. In this collection the writer’s eyes are wide open, taking in the world and then reflecting it in all its strangeness and beauty. She pushes edges, teeters on brinks, creating the exhilaration that comes only with taking risks. Her characters are real people in a real world who achieve break-out velocity and recreate themselves by signal acts of courage and self-definition. Frequently, her plots hinge on a demand for justice in a world clouded with calculation and evasion, resulting in a collection as strong in content as it is in style.’’

Runners-up Darcie Friesen Hossack and Alexander MacLeod will each receive $500.

Of Darcie Friesen Hossack’s, Mennonites Don’t Dance (Thistledown Press) the jury said: ‘‘Readers easily and gladly enter the world Darcie Friesen Hossack has created in Mennonites Don’t Dance. That world, a primarily Mennonite world, is peopled with an array of characters both fair and foul, kind and cruel, characters all engaged to greater or lesser degrees in what Faulkner has called the ‘struggles of the human heart.’ These fine stories are written with great care, unfolding naturally and skilfully.’’

Of Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting (Biblioasis) the jury said: ‘‘The stories in Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting are dense with the tragic poetry of the everyday. His narrators speak in a deceptively relaxed vernacular that reflects a fierce emotional intensity just beneath the surface of the words, the stoic heroism of the common man and woman, and MacLeod’s commitment to realistic story-telling.”

The short list of five books was announced on May 2, 2011 and also included R.W. Gray’s Crisp (NeWest Press) and Teri Vlassopoulos’s Bats or Swallows (Invisible Publishing).

The DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD was created as a celebration of the life of Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in 1996. Danuta Gleed’s first collection of short fiction, One of the Chosen, was posthumously published by BuschekBooks. The Award is made possible through a generous donation from John Gleed in memory of his late wife, and is administered by The Writers’ Union of Canada.

The Writers’ Union of Canada is our country’s national organization representing professional authors of books. Founded in 1973, the Union is dedicated to fostering writing in Canada, and promoting the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers.

 

Burning through Books with author Sylvia Petter

“We are with students for a lifetime, we are their cheerleaders for life.” ~ Antanas Sileika, creative director of the Humber School for Writers.

Not only is this true, but for some students, this also describes relationships between teachers and fellow graduates. From my year, about a dozen of us (all women) still exchange flurries of emails about writing and publishing and life.

This group, which can’t seem to name itself, has grafted in a few more members over the years, including other writers and editors.

Personally, I’ve also connected with another Humber grad, and the friendship has turned into an unexpected blessing.

Aussie author Sylvia Petter was not part of my original Humber class. We instead waved hello across a Facebook group for Humber alumni (she was mentored by both Peter Carey and Timothy Findley, who she affectionately refers to as “Tiff”) and have kept in touch ever since.

When in Toronto a couple of years ago, Sylvia sent me one a signed copy of the original print version of Back Burning, her newest collection of short fiction.

Now holding a doctorate in creative writing, Sylvia is not only a published author, but specializes in teaching the art of the short story. Lately, she offered a critique up for bid on an “Authors for Japan” auction raising Red Cross funds for tsunami victims. And although I didn’t have a new short story ready I put up my paddle.

While Sylvia is still waiting for that short story to take place on an actual page, she has read the first third of my novel-in-progress, and keeps welcoming more pages, and more.

The thing is, I needed in the worst way to see the story and language through someone else’s eyes because mine had become blurred with literary cataracts from looking to closely. My book had stalled in a mud puddle of doubt.

I keep thanking Sylvia for such a gift. And simply, “Tiff,” she says, “would want it that way.”

As though that’s not enough, I asked another favour: Would she would be willing to talk to me for this blog.

Her answer, gracious as always, was yes. The following is our conversation, which happened via email last week.

Thank you Sylvia, for this and so much else!

Q: Our paths crossed in a roundabout sort of way because of the Humber School for Writers. Your mentor there was an author whose name Canadians speak in hushed tones. He’s that loved. Tell me, how did you come to have Timothy Findley as your teacher, and what was the experience like, both during and after you’d finished the class?

Yes, my Humber experience certainly played a big part in my development as a writer. In 1997, I attended a summer workshop run by Wayson Choy. It was an intense and satisfying experience. Then I saw that Australian Peter Carey was on the faculty and thought how great it would be to work with him in the correspondence course. But Carey was tied up with the filming of his book, Oscar and Lucinda, and so Joe Kertes suggested I work with Timothy Findley. (I eventually did work with Peter Carey on another novel, Ambergris, the last time he taught at Humber. It was very helpful for my writing but very different to my experience with Timothy Findley).

I’d never heard of Timothy Findley and the course was more expensive for non-Canadians. I remember phoning Joe from France and telling him, I’d have to take out a loan to pay for the course. He assured me that Timothy Findley would be perfect for me. This was in 1999 and Timothy Findley was still living in France and so was I. We did everything by snail mail. I sent him a draft of my novel, tentatively entitled Tillandsia, and thought that I was nearly there with it. It was the last time he was doing the correspondence course before going on book tour for his novel, Pilgrim. Over the 30 weeks, not only did he look at Tillandsia, but also the beginning of another novel in progress, Duende, and gave me detailed feedback on both works, with lots of questions that I was to explore. It was an intense period.

He was tough, but he was also very generous. He hinted that Tillandsia and Duende might be the same story and that I needed to find the right way to tell it. He made me think about coincidence, about character, structure and most of all about storytelling. Let me share some advice from his correspondence: “In stage terms, you (the writer) indicate some of the setting design and some of its details, some of the lighting and sound effects – and the reader supplies the rest of the look and the sound of the production; you define the roles to be played – but the reader does the casting for each role. And thus, every reader achieves a different and entirely appropriate production. “

When the course was over I reworked the novel, but I think I took on that job far too soon. He had warned me against this, saying that novels could take years to mature and mentioned that Pilgrim had taken almost 20. Today, Tilly (as I call my novel still in revision) is still unfinished, but I think I am ready now to revisit it, and once again study all our correspondence, reread Famous Last Words, for example. Timothy Findley’s guidance to me continues through his works. I miss that there’ll not be more of them.

Q: You have a shelf of CanLit in your office. Who’s on it?

Janette Turner Hospital, my Oz-Can link – I’d discovered her short stories in a remainder bin on a trip back home. She spoke to me through her stories, Dislocations and Isobars. Timothy Findley – I devoured everything he wrote. Famous Last Words is my textbook. Lauren Davis, who was also mentored by Timothy Findley and attended the Geneva Writers´Group, Isabel Huggan, who also gave workshops in Geneva, Wayson Choy. All those are on two shelves together. Then there are other shelves with Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry, Dennis Bock, Mavis Gallant, Anne Michaels, Elisabeth Harvor, Erika de Vasconcelos, Richard Scrimger, copies of Descant and Prism, collections of Canadian short stories, Robertson Davies, Clark Blaise and Alistair McLeod

Q: For readers getting to know Sylvia Petter for the first time, I’ve heard you refer to yourself as a kangaroo living in Vienna. How did your writing take you from one place to the other?

There are lots of souvenir items, including T-shirts, in Vienna, which say “No kangaroos in Austria”, and somehow that seemed not quite true. So I bought one of those T-shirts and marked it up to read: I am a kangaroo in Austria; that highlights who I am, an Austr(al)ian. I was born in Vienna and grew up in Australia, and now I’m back, not really belonging anywhere anymore. My writing takes me to places linked to identity, subversion, truth in the lies and vice versa, in short, places of dislocation where I enjoy what in German they call “Narrenfreiheit” – I guess a sort of freedom of fools. It’s the dislocation, perhaps, that informs my writing, even when I’m writing bits of nonsense just for the fun of it, which I also like to do.

Q: Janette Turner Hospital calls you “…a cartographer of dislocated lives.” There’s wonderful poetry in that image. What does it mean to you, the writer who charts these characters.

When my publisher told me what she had written for the blurb on my book, Back Burning, the hairs on my arms stood up straight. It was a shivery experience. Often I discover things in my stories through the lenses of readers. What a reader sees and feels on reading my stories helps me explore my own dislocation, taking a phrase from John Metcalfe, shows me “how stories mean”.  If a cartographer draws up her chart after having gone down the road, then maybe that’s what I do. But there is never a chart at the beginning; it’s all unknown territory when starting out.

Q: Lately you’ve been telling me about your “souk” that’s currently under construction. “Souk” isn’t a word I’ve come across in Canada. Would you mind telling us about it, and yours in particular?

Ah, the souk. I was in Marrakech ages before I started writing fiction in the early 90s, and loved the souk, the marketplace filled with a jumble of goods from spices to satins and in the middle an old man cross-legged on an old carpet, before him an array of dentures and single teeth and the instruments for pulling them – a dentist of sorts. That image came back to me in my first writing room in France – papers and books all over the place, organic disorder, and in the middle, notebooks and computer, my tooth pulling instruments.

Sylvia's souk

Q: The collection of short stories, Back Burning (Interactive Press), is your most recent book. But there were others before, and others to come. What would you like people to know about your recent book? What are you working on now?

Between the Wayson Choy and Timothy Findley courses, I answered a call for submissions in the TLS. My collection, The Past Present, was accepted and in 2000 appeared as one of the first eBooks, and in 2001 as a POD (print-on-demand). It was a publishing “labour of love” ahead of its time, which soon sadly failed. Five years later, my collection, Back Burning, won Best Fiction Prize at IP. I’m very fond of Back Burning. It was important for me to be published in Australia, it was like coming home. But maybe Janette Turner Hospital’s words on the cover hint at my doubt in the existence of such a place. I need to revise Tilly, as well as Ambergris, the novel I did for my PhD at UNSW in Sydney on the smell of dislocation. Then I want to take stories from The Past Present and self publish them as an eBook together with many others not in Back Burning. That collection will be called Mercury Blobs – no publisher would ever accept that, hence the self publishing. It will be all over the place, my kind of thing. But first I need to finish a “memoir in craft” on the work of my mother with lots of photos of how she interpreted “waste not, want not”. And, of course, after all that, or maybe in between, there’ll be stories.

Q: What is your favourite thing about writing?

There’s a magical state of wanting to know how a story ends that I want to recapture. I was there once when I first started writing. I want to go back there to that freedom and energy and passion, that road into the unknown. Sure, there’s tooth pulling, but it’s worth it. Recently, John Siddique, a poet friend, wrote a blog post about the book teaching the writer how to write, how each book makes you start all over again. Starting something new, letting story take over. I think that’s what I love about writing.

Q: What do you think would surprise people to know about you?

Back in the 60s, between high school and uni in Sydney, I was working in the underwear section of a big department store. A woman was looking for a brand of bra we didn’t have, but I’d seen that brand in the window of a small shop a few blocks away and so rather than trying to sell her something from the department store, I told her she’d find what she wanted just down the road. She was very pleased. Needless to say, my supervisor was not impressed. I guess I still do that.

shortlisted!

I received news this morning that both Mennonites Don’t Dance and my friend Teri Vlassopoulos’ book, Bats or Swallows, have been shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award! Congratulations Teri, I’m so excited to share this moment with you!

Meanwhile, if this is the first time you’ve heard about Mennonites Don’t Dance, here’s a little more information to go on:

Darcie Friesen Hossack - Darcie Friesen Hossack

REVIEW: FICTION

Arresting, mesmerizing, authentic, stunning

REVIEWED BY JIM BARTLEY

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

Jonah’s life as a chore-burdened Saskatchewan farm boy is hard enough without the black moods of his father, Abram, who considers himself an abject failure and humanity a plague of locusts. Worse, Jonah’s Uncle Elias is a strong-ox “Samson” of a man whose God-fearing work ethic and bountiful fields have shamed Jonah’s dad for decades.

Mennonites Don’t Dance, by Darcie Friesen Hossack, Thistledown, 201 pages, $18.95

Luna, the opener of Darcie Friesen Hossack’s arresting story collection (short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for first fiction, canada and the Caribbean) offers characters fully integrated with their setting: defined by land, weather, hidebound family hierarchies and their success or failure at prospering under the yoke. Jonah’s creeping bitterness, as he grows to become a young husband and father, gives the story a unnerving heat that you fear will become incendiary.

Read the rest of the review here.